40 farming groups cultivate 78 hectares of improved cassava

Juaso (Ash), June 3, GNA- Forty farming groups in the Asante Akim South district have cultivated a total of 78.08 hectares of improved cassava under the President's Special Initiatives (PSI) and Rural Enterprise Development (RED) programme.

Dr Lord Justice Gyamfi-Fenteng, the District Chief Executive who announced this said 613 acres of land in the district are under cassava cultivation with 2,310 acres available for additional cropping. The DCE was addressing a two-day ordinary meeting of the assembly at Juaso on Wednesday.

He said the district, having chosen cassava processing for the RED programme, 44 groups and 559 individual cassava farmers have been registered and the district is among the first 30 districts for the cassava processing project in the country.

Dr Gyamfi-Fenteng said a total of 502 hectares of degraded forest out of the 800 demarcated under the National Plantations Development Project has been restored with 3,500 farmers involved. He said this was in line with the PSI on Plantation Development in degraded areas of forest reserves.

The DCE said about 50 youngsters are to be employed to plant trees in the towns that participated in the forestation programme adding, "we are required to have at least 50 acres in the district to cover under Urban Afforestation Programme for the year".

He said plans were afoot to prosecute those who have defaulted in payment of the Poverty Reduction Scheme.